When word arrived Nov. 12 of Bob Fehlman’s impending retirement as CEO of Simmons First National Corp. and its subsidiary Simmons Bank, the news signaled the end of one of the more remarkable career stories in Arkansas business history.
Fehlman, who spent nearly 40 years at Simmons, helped build the institution from a relatively modest Arkansas bank facing choppy market waters into a bold, multistate enterprise that perennially ranks near the top of Arkansas’ largest homegrown banking systems.
“I’m really proud of what the company’s grown to,” Fehlman said. “I started in 1988, when the company was half a billion dollars, and we were stretching to be $500 million at the time. Over the 36 years I’ve been here, I’ve worked on 25, 30 acquisitions, and we’ve gone from a $500 million bank to $27 billion.
“We went from just being an Arkansas franchise to being a six-state regional bank, one of the top 50 banks in the country. We’ve got almost 3,000 associates. I’m just very proud of the relationships we’ve built with customers, our regulators, our communities and our associates.”
As Fehlman likes to say, it was not the acquisitions that went through that made the difference in his career; it was the ones that did not happen that truly kept the bank on its successful heading. That is because the ones that did not happen, which greatly outnumber the ones that did, fell through for all the right reasons.
“In dealmaking, you can’t give on the things that are nonnegotiable, such as your culture and your values,” he said. “We never wavered on those things. We had some deals we walked away from because there was something going on that just didn’t fit our culture. Some of those were right at the end of due diligence, but you’ve got to be willing to walk away.”
Fehlman’s story began in the Chicagoland community of Zurich, Illinois, as the youngest of four. Growing up, his father, a carpenter, took him to job sites, where the youngster learned pride of work and the value of effort. As time went along, Fehlman would also learn certain skills, and while he would never be mistaken for a master carpenter in his lifetime, he can still wire a socket or plumb a sink with the best of them.
In 1979, the family relocated to Hope, Arkansas, thanks largely to his parents having fallen in love with the state many years before on their honeymoon. The household’s youngest member, however, remembered being less than impressed with his new surroundings.
“There were three or four channels on TV,” he said. “The food was different. People had a hard time understanding me because of my accent, and I had a hard time understanding them.”
Fehlman assimilated mainly through sports; entering ninth grade, he excelled on the high school football and baseball teams. He also got an exposure to the business world that struck an unanticipated nerve through a class called Junior Executive Training, which he enrolled in on a whim.
“I was bored by history and math, but when I discovered JET, everything about it clicked,” he said. “I only took the class because my friends were in it, but they really did a good job with general business, finance, tracking stocks.”
Seeing his enthusiasm for accounting, the instructor arranged for Fehlman to talk with a local accountant, who laid out the careers available in the industry. After graduation, Fehlman headed for Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, the first in his family to attend a four-year college or university, and graduated with a degree in accounting.
More than the academic side of his chosen field, Fehlman also credited his college years for developing various other soft skills that would become invaluable in his business career. His membership in Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, for example, brought him out of his shell and gave him leadership opportunities on various committees.
One particularly impactful project was chairing the house’s annual boxing night with rival Ouachita Baptist University, a major Sigma Phi fundraiser through which he found his voice by asking for sponsorship and advertising money, managing people, and generally gaining a boost of self-confidence in his abilities.
Also while at Henderson, he laid the first brick in his foundational belief in balance in one’s life by marrying his high school sweetheart. With a wife and future family to support, he doubled down academically to the point that he was able to begin work on a master’s degree even before graduating with his bachelor’s when he was awarded a graduate assistantship in business development as part of the Small Business Association.
By the time he walked the stage, he had wrangled a position at Baird, Kurtz & Dobson, which is today Forvis, at the company’s Pine Bluff office. He was offered the job on the spot during his interview, which was a major get considering the Pine Bluff branch was the company’s largest at the time.
Fehlman quickly established himself as one to watch not just for his accounting prowess but for his interest in leveraging technology to work smarter, not harder. A couple of months into his BKD career, the brass pulled him aside and asked him to get some computers up and running that had sat in mothballs for two years for lack of the expertise to put them to use.
In 1988, Fehlman made the jump to Simmons Bank in the internal audit department, which was not the no-brainer it might be today. The Pine Bluff-based bank was mired in one of its less-flattering chapters, struggling with serious financial problems. Fehlman signed up anyway and was soon ringside to the bank’s stabilization under Arkansas Business Hall of Famer and Simmons President and CEO Tommy May.
One of May’s most valued foot soldiers as Simmons Bank was retooled and positioned for growth, Fehlman credited his former boss as a master in the areas of corporate leadership and vision. To this day, he and others refuse to call the former Marine by his first name as a sign of enduring respect.
“He would challenge you in your work, but he was fair in everything he did,” Fehlman said. “His famous thing that he always said was he was a benevolent dictator, and I will tell you that that is true — not the dictator side as much as the benevolence. He may make a decision we may not agree on, but the bottom line was he’s going to make sure we’re taking care of people, whether it’s our associates, our communities, our customers or our shareholders. We’re going to be doing the right thing. We called it the ‘Do Right Rule,’ and it’s still ingrained as part of our company culture.”
By the early 1990s, the bank had reached another existential crossroads: Down this path was to grow and grow aggressively via acquisition, and down that one, cash out as a tasty guppy swallowed by larger predators. The bank’s board of directors chose growth, and management went after one strategic target after another, racking up an impressive record of success with Fehlman ankle-deep in all of them.
During the buying spree, the company learned a great deal about negotiations and procedure, enough to actually create a handbook that spells out the exact steps to a successful deal and the telltale earmarks of something to stay away from. Simmons Bank’s reputation for fair dealing and treatment of employees even had some banks calling in, asking to be acquired.
“I will tell you, in negotiations, when we talked to banks on doing a deal, one of the things they liked about us is we were open on the front end,” Fehlman said. “We said, ‘Pricing is not rocket science, and we’re not out here trying to get as much as we can out of you. We have these four or five factors that we have to hit to benefit our shareholders, and we’re going to tell you what those are.’ This is simple math when you get down to it.”
Playing a role in one of the state’s biggest bank success stories is an obvious plumb of any executive’s career, and for Fehlman, the satisfaction of pulling off all those deals goes beyond what it did to the stock price. He pointed to the opportunities that growth created for the company’s associates and the good it allowed Simmons to do for causes and communities as major points of personal pride.
“About 10 years ago, we started the Simmons First Foundation,” he said. “[Simmons’ Executive Chairman] George Makris Jr. was the one who went to Mr. May and asked him to lead that, and I worked on the inception of it and helped build it this whole time. We’ve got a lot of money in it now, and we give away thousands and thousands of dollars each year related to our youth, to education. It’s a part of the Simmons legacy that we’re all very proud of.”
During his decades with the company, Fehlman served as controller, chief financial officer, treasurer, chief operating officer and president, capping his career in the CEO chair starting Jan. 1, 2023. He will officially step away Jan. 1, 2025, at a time when the bank is operating at an unprecedented level of financial success and, equally important, to unprecedented recognition as an employer of choice. Simmons was one of U.S. News & World Report’s 2024-2025 “Best Companies to Work For in the South” and one of the 2024 Forbes “America’s Best-In-State Employers 2024” in the state of Missouri, presented by Forbes and Statista.
The “Do Right Rule” is, evidently, as strong as ever when it comes to Simmons’ treatment of its people, which is perhaps the biggest source of Fehlman’s satisfaction as he steps into an advisory role and then full-blown retirement.
“Well, I’ve got to tell you, I won’t miss the emails that I get every day or the crisis and deadlines that come up that are part of it. I’m happy to let the younger guys handle that from now on,” he said. “It’s always been about the people to me. I’m going to miss the incredible board that we have here. They’ve been so supportive of me. I’ve been going to board meetings since probably 1994. Heck, I’ve been at the bank, I think, longer than anybody on the board, currently.
“Also, the leadership in this company, I’ve really grown close to. We’ve got a lot of young leaders coming up who I have a lot of faith in. I’m very optimistic; I know where the company’s heading, and I feel very comfortable about it. Then you have all the associates around the whole company who have done such an incredible job. That’s what I’m going to miss — the people here, the customers, the people in the community. That’s the biggest thing.”
BOB FEHLMAN ON MENTORS
“In my career, there’s been four major mentors that I’ve worked for. One would be Barry Crow, our former CFO/COO with the bank for a long time. Obviously, Mr. Tommy May; he and I spent a lot of time together, were very close and still do a lot together. Marty Castile, he and I actually started the same year at Simmons, 1988, and we came up through different paths but we worked together very closely. He retired a couple years ago and was on our board. Then George Makris [Jr.], obviously. Even though they were all different, the things that they all held in common were operating with absolute integrity, challenging people to do their best work, and doing what was right for the customer and community.”
BOB FEHLMAN ON PROFESSIONAL COURAGE
“The first thing is to be willing to step out there and take on challenges whether you know what you’re doing or not. You may fail, you may not, but try and figure it out as you’re going. Ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help as you go. A lot of things really just come down to an attitude of what do we need to do? How can I help solve it or get the people involved to help get it solved? Don’t be afraid to step out there and take on projects and figure it out as you go along.”
FEHLMAN ON GETTING AHEAD
“Some days, you get rewarded and praised more than you deserve, and some days, you don’t get the praise and recognition at all. You’ve got to be able to handle both sides of it. The best way I know how to do that is to work hard. Even when you’re, maybe, not getting the praise or reward all the time, when you’re working hard, it will eventually catch up with you, and it will be noticed.”
BOB FEHLMAN ON NEGOTIATION
“First, you’ve got to establish your principles. What are you trying to negotiate that’s best for the company or yourself, for what you’re trying to negotiate? You’ve got to establish what you are trying to accomplish here, and what is that worth to you? After that, as you’re going through the negotiation process, No. 1 is to be fair to both sides. You’re not trying to take advantage of one side or the other. You lay things out on the table. You listen to both sides, and be honest. You’ve always got to stick to your main principles, but you’ve also got to be willing to give some when the time is right.”
BOB FEHLMAN ON RESILIENCE
“I think you have to realize, No. 1, there’s going to be things that are fair in life, and there’s going to be things that are not fair in life. Don’t focus on all the times that it’s not fair because those times are coming. Just be prepared for them. To me, the biggest thing is to have patience when things don’t go your way, to keep your head down and work through it. Don’t turn negative; if you start talking with others about how bad things are, that just builds more negativity. If you just put your head down and say, ‘OK, I can muscle through this,’ you’re more likely to figure out what you need to do to keep moving forward. I firmly believe hard work and doing the right thing eventually catches up with a person, even in those times when life’s not fair.”
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